


daisy chains

by zadonis



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluffy, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:19:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2596772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zadonis/pseuds/zadonis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>it all begins under a blue sky and surrounded by flowers. after that there's no going back</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	daisy chains

**Author's Note:**

> also found [here](http://smokeyziam.tumblr.com/post/102288450822/daisy-chains-a-ziam-oneshot) on tumblr

I once read someone’s theory that soul mates exist as the particles of the universe that were beside each other before the Big Bang and they spend the rest of eternity trying to get back beside each other again. See, that’s just me; I’ve always been a big believer in soulmates and fate – how could I not believe in fate when it’s the sole cause of me meeting my four best friends and brothers. I’ve always liked the idea that I was just a cluster of star elements, that if I burned bright enough, climbed high enough, I could be a star.

The other boys laughed, told me they didn’t believe in that stuff. Except for Zayn. He told me that it had to have been a twist of fate that led to him meeting us, that led to his mother dragging him out of bed so early in the morning and down to the audition, to him meeting me and then all of us.

We talked about it sometimes in the second year of the band; when we were growing in success and we all felt a little bit lost in the rush and pull of the fame. Zayn and I would bury ourselves in the hotel duvets and whisper to each other until early morning when the thin curtains glowed blue by the light of dawn and the shouts of fans outside had faded into the sound of cars and sirens.

It was in the fourth year of the band that we all began to feel the strain. We were being pulled in every direction and the stress was beginning to get to all of us.

“Give us a break, please. A long break.” We pleaded with our managers and after quite a lot of prodding, they agreed to give us four months off after we finished the tour. Four months of no touring, no interviews or promo or paparazzi set ups. For those four months, we were free from them and it was so fantastic.

For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe again.

The first month and a half was brilliant. I was able to catch up with my friends, my family, any and all things that I’d missed over the busy last few months. But then, I began to miss the boys, my brothers, but most of all Zayn. I missed our long chats into the early mornings when he’d chainsmoke and we’d talk about everything and nothing and anything at all.

I decided to take it into my own hands to talk with him. “How’re you, mate?” I asked as I showed up at his door late one morning.

The first thing I noticed was the way that he smelled like weed, the bloodshot look of his eyes, and his hair – clearly dirty and flat on his head, shorter than when we’d ended the tour – and then my eyes fell to his bruised knuckles that gripped the edge of the door. When I pushed the heavy wooden thing open slightly more, I saw that he was dressed in only a pair of red boxers, his bare torso covered in the familiar tangles of ink.

He squinted at me and also to see through the bright sunlight which he was probably seeing for the first time in days. “I’m fine, Leeyum. Why’re you here?” The tone of his voice was gruff, like he was trying to keep me away, at an arm’s length. “I haven’t missed something for the band, have I? How long’s it been?”

I shook my head at him, at the blurry mess that he’s become in the past six weeks. “It’s only been a month and a half. Can I come in?” That was barely a question because I pushed inside his home before the sentence was fully out of my mouth.

The whole place was in disarray. The windows were closed, curtains drawn, and there were empty food containers everywhere.

I heard the door close behind me and I turned to see Zayn with his back pressed against it, arms folded, and his eyes glowing as they stared me down. “Why’re you here?”

“I missed you.” I looked down at my feet, nudging a dirty shirt that I was almost certain was Lou’s. “I wanted to come talk to you and hang out, if that’s alright?”

His biceps flexed as he shifted his folded arms and my eyes moved to the black mass on his right arm. There was a section that had been scribbled and blotted over with what looked like a black sharpie and I happened to know for a fact that it was the tattoo of Perrie that was hidden under that.

Suddenly all of this was making a lot more sense.

His eyes followed mine to his covered tattoo. “We split up. She didn’t wanna be with me for some reason or another. It was a big fight, I barely remember what happened.” He coughed and ran a hand though his hair. “But I’m fine, Li.”

Everything that he said and the way that he was living convinced me to the opposite of that.

“You’re not, though. You’ve lost track of time, and no offense, but you look like you’ve not showered in a week.” I took a few steps closer to my bandmate. “Zayn, you need to get out of this house.”

At first, it looked like he was going to argue with me, tell me that he really was fine, that he’d just been having a video game marathon over the past few days and hadn’t had time to freshen up, hadn’t been expecting visitors.

Then he nodded his head in affirmation.

“Alright, take me somewhere.” Zayn ducked his head and I felt my own heart melt.

“C’mon, mate. Let’s go get you in the shower.” I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him with me down the hallway to his bedroom.

*

The first place I took him was miles and miles away from London. We’d just been driving down a random road because neither of us knew where we were going, and that’s when I spotted it.

A small dirt road turned off the one that we were currently bumping down and so I quickly jerked the wheel that way, taking Zayn by surprise as his head knocked into the window and he let out a yelp. “Hey, what the hell, Liam?” I ignored him and continued to drive down the dusty country road.

On either side of us it was fields, swaying grass and flowers for as far as we could see and I decided that this would be a nice spot to stop and relax, get away from everything else.

When I rolled to a stop on the side of the road, Zayn looked more confused than he had before. “What are you doing?”

“Get out.” I told him as I unbuckled my seat belt and reached into the backseat.

“What the hell, Liam? Why’d you stop?” His voice was frantic, panicky.

I looked up from my search in the back row of seats. His eyes were wide and frightened, I could see his heavy breathing and his heartbeat was practically pounding in my ears. “Zayn, just get out, alright, I thought this would be a nice place to stop. I’m not going to leave you here or anything. I’m not Louis.”

That drew a small smile from him as he remembered the time when Louis had lured Niall out on an expedition while we were in America. It had just been the two of them with Louis driving and they’d gone out into the middle of nowhere where the land was flat, dust blew around like it was part of the wind, and dead fields covered the earth for miles all around. Niall had gotten out because Lou told him to and that’s when the older boy had driven off, laughing loudly out the window.

It had taken security three hours to go out there, find Niall, and bring him back. Louis got a stern talking to and Niall had ignored him for a grand total of 8 hours.

“I promise, I won’t leave you, Zayn.”

Finally, I dug out the blanket that I’d been searching for and I climbed out of my car, walking over to join Zayn a few feet away.

It was a rarely warm, sunny day for this time of year and my best mate was standing there, eyes closed as he faced the sun, face upturned to soak in the natural heat of the sunrays.

“C’mon, let’s walk out here.” My fingers brushed over his arm, the one not covered in sharpie scribbles, and he jerked away as if my touch had electrocuted him.

He moved ahead of me, plunging into the waving field before I could say anything else to him. I followed the path that he made, until we reached an area that was particularly populated with flowers and buzzing bees that didn’t seem too frightening at the moment.

“Here, this looks like a nice spot.” Once again I reached for his arm to gently stop him, and once again, he moved away before I could really make contact.

I frowned as I turned away from him to spread out the blanket, press down some of the flowers so there was just enough room that we could lay down on the sheet and stare up at the clouds.

I was on my back, blue sky and sunlight all I could see, and then his shadow towered over me. “Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious? C’mon, lay down with me, Zaynie.” I reached up for his hand, not daring to touch him this time. I watched his face, the way that his throat bobbed and his tongue darted out to wet his lips, his eyes trailed from my fingertips down to my chest.

Tentatively, his fingers dipped against my palm, warm and soft and strong. I pulled him down beside me.

His back hit the ground with an ‘oof’ and he reached over to swat at my shoulder. “Be gentle, Leeyum. I’m fragile.”

My face contracted as I grinned, my eyes turned into crescent moons over my cheeks, and I laughed loudly, staring at the boy beside me instead of the fluffy clouds overhead.

His face broke into a wide grin as well, his lips parted to reveal his teeth with his tongue pressed up behind them in glee. He was glowing and I was losing my grip on reality; the chilly wind sent rivers of goosebumps over my skin which counteracted the sun’s heating effect, and yet I was burning up from the inside out all because my best mate was smiling at me like I was the only other thing in the world.

“I’ve missed you, Li.” The hand that wasn’t tangled with mine reached over to touch my face; a soft trace of his fingers over my stubbly, ragged jawline.

“I missed you, too. I’m still fine without the other lads, but you – I need to see you and talk with you.” I confessed with my gaze locked on the older boy’s.

That Zayn-smirk of his appeared and he moved his hand away from my face, turning to look up at the long stretch of sky above us. “That one’s shaped like Africa.” He laughed, pointing up at the large cloud floating by overhead.

“Yeah, it does.” When I moved to withdraw my hand to act as a pillow behind my head, Zayn’s fingers only held on tighter. His pulse thrummed in the skin of his thumb, beating back like a drum against the skin of my wrist. “That one looks like an elephant.”

I could clearly see its ears and the long trunk and even the tusks, but Zayn chuckled. “No, mate, that’s obviously a bunny.”

We laid there for a while, bathing in the warm sunlight and the buzzing of the bees, making fun of each other for what we saw in the clouds.

After a little while, my arms began to cramp from being in the same position for so long, so I sat up, crossing my legs in front of me. I began to pick flowers while Zayn talked, telling me about all kinds of things. Dreams, video games, silly things his parents and sisters had shared with him in their phone calls.

I continued to pick the wildflowers from around us until I had a nice pile sitting in the bowl of my lap.

“Why don’t you tell me something, Payno? You’ve been rather quiet for a while. This is unusual.” He kicked out his leg to nudge mine, and I looked up to smile at him.

“What do you want me to say?” I picked up one of the flowers, twirling it around between my fingers. “It’s been nice to be on this break. I haven’t felt so relaxed ever, I don’t think. It’s just been so nice to be away from it all. To not have to worry about anything really.” As I spoke, I knotted together the stems of two flowers.

Zayn was watching my hands as I worked and I smiled, looking back down at my own hands only after I felt the stem of one of the flowers split open, leaving a hole in the middle of it.

“I can tell you about the film I saw the other night with Andy. Is that alright?” Most people would hate the spoilers, but Zayn nodded and I began to tell him all about the movie. While I spoke, I poked the stem of one flower through the hole I’d already made, and then I peeled a hole in that stem and put a flower through that one as well, and so on until I was reaching the end of the movie and I had enough flowers chained together that I ran out. I looped the first one through the stem of the last one and just like that I’d made a flower crown.

Zayn had his eyes closed, facing up towards the sky that was beginning to turn golden as the sun set towards the horizon.

“And in the very last scene, they walked over the mountain singing Kumbayah.” I finished the story with that completely bogus line just to make certain that he as paying attention.

His lips quirked into a smile. “That’s not the real ending, Leeyum. I’m not asleep yet; I was still listening.” His eyes remained shut, so I scooted closer to him, lifting up the flower crown gently as I moved. “Tell me how it really ends.”

With a smile, I carefully placed the flower crown on his head as best as I could. “I can’t do that, can I? It would ruin the whole thing for you.”

Zayn sat up, reaching for the new headwear I’d bestowed on him. “Please?” He stuck out his pink bottom lip, putting on his puppy eyes.

“No,” I laughed, reaching out to poke his shoulder. “Why don’t you come back to mine and we can watch it. You can see the ending for yourself.”

He wrinkled his nose, “I dunno, mate, maybe I’ve had enough of you for the day.”  

I pushed at his shoulder until he’d fallen onto his back and then I moved so that I was sitting over him, and I growled out the words “You’re coming back to mine.”

Something in his eyes shifted and he swallowed, lifting his chin up a bit. “Course I will, Leeyum. It’ll be just like the old days.”

Something bubbled warmly in my lower abdomen and I felt a smile rise to my lips. “Just like the old days.” Sitting back on my ankles, I fished my phone out of my pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Quick little picture.” I grinned down at him as I positioned the camera over his face, “Smile for me, Zaynie.”

The older boy smiled up and at that very moment, the sun shifted out from behind a cloud, streaking sunlight through the field around us, and striping across Zayn’s face. The crown of wild flowers was positioned just-so against the inky color of Zayn’s hair, his eyes were the perfect shade of dark hazel, and his grin was positively radiant.

I pressed the shutter button down and it was perfect. He looked like the hipster girls whose photos I’d seen on Twitter and Tumblr; I held back from bursting out a grin until I was standing up again, holding a hand down to help him up.

“Let’s go home.”

*

We were wrapped together on the sofa, his head in my lap as the film played on the television. We’d gotten take out on the way home; I’d run inside to get it from the small place and somewhere between leaving the car and picking up the food, someone had notified fans that I was there because there was a small group waiting outside the door for me.

I took a few photos before I excused myself back to the car.

Zayn was slouched all the way down in his seat, so far down that I had to laugh when I slid back inside. “What are you doing?”

“Hiding, Leeyum. Imagine what they’d do if they knew I was here too.” He stayed in that slouched position until we’d pulled away from the camera flashes. “I don’t look like I’m ready for photos.”

Back at my place, we dug into the food, I found the film, and we settled in beside each other.

I ignored my phone every time it vibrated on the coffee table – probably just a text or a call from Andy asking me to come out.

Zayn still had the flower crown, but now it was twisted around his wrist like a bracelet, and every now and then I caught him reaching down to touch it with his other hand. He was watching the movie, so his movements seemed to be absentminded. I wasn’t watching it, so my movements of brushing my fingers through his hair was intended. 

“Leeyum, I’m tired.” He mumbled after a little while, his nose poking into my thigh.

I tangled my fingers in his hair, “Go to sleep then, donut.” I thumped him on the forehead with my thumb and several lines of a frown bloomed there.

He swatted at my hand until I removed it, and then he sat up, scooting away from me on the sofa. “I don’t want to sleep, though. I want to spend more time with you.”

“I’ll still be here when you wake up. This is my house; I’m not going to leave you in it.”

“Maybe I should go home.” He suggested a moment later. “I need to clean the place up, and do some other stuff.”

Zayn rose to his feet and I was quick to follow in an effort to stop him.

Somehow our feet got tangled and with a lot of laughter and a particularly emasculating shriek from me, we tumbled down onto the cushions. His hands were a solid presence on my hips and my hands braced me up on either side of his head, so that we were face-to-face, only a few inches of breath between us.

It was similar to our position from earlier in that pasture; his eyes went wide as he swallowed hard. His fingers on my hips twitched and he licked his lips.

In the blink of an eye, he was lurching up into me, but our heads didn’t crack together like would’ve happened with Louis or Niall, no, our lips connected and he was kissing me – there was no way that this had been an accident.

I pushed at his shoulders until our mouths broke apart and his back was flat on the cushions once again. “What the hell?” I spat the words out more harshly than I’d originally intended, but they had the effect that I’d subliminally been hoping for.

Zayn squiggled around and then slid out from under my body. He was barely on his feet beside the couch when he ran off, just a clatter of noise followed by the loud slam of my front door.

Just like that, I was alone again and my heart was throbbing painfully in my chest.

*

Over the next few weeks, I tried calling him, and when that didn’t work, I went over to his place to try to confront him in person. He never answered. Either he was ignoring me or he really wasn’t home (something told me that it was a combination of both), but I missed him; I needed to talk to him more than ever before.

Towards the very end of our time off, I went to visit Louis in hopes that he’d be able to tell me where Zayn had vanished to for the last two months.

The first thing he did when he opened his front door was glare at me, and then he held the door open wider to let me inside. “What’s up, Payno?”

“Not much, but, uh, have you talked to Zayn recently?” I was wringing my hands, a nervous tick I’d developed over the past few weeks. “It’s just that I’ve been trying to call him and I’ve gone over to his house, but he’s not answered the door.”

Louis rolled his eyes. “He’s gone away on holiday with his parents and sisters. They’re in somewhere beachy and warm last I heard. Do you have any idea why he’s neglected to tell you this, Liam?” There was a knowing glint in his eyes and I knew that he knew what I’d thought only Zayn and I knew.

“Yeah, but that’s why I wanted to talk to him!”

Once again eyes were rolled, but this time a comforting pat on the back accompanied it. “Talk to him when we start doing stuff as a band again. Give him some time to cool off, yeah?” I nodded in agreement, a cold feeling spreading through my chest because that was still a week and a half away. “Hey, why don’t you come listen to this song that I’ve been working on? I’ve been struggling with a certain part and I was just thinking the other day ‘I should call up, Payno. He’ll know how to help me out of this jam.’”

By the end of the day, we’d finished that song and written another.

My mind was still roaring with words to be spoken.

*

Our first day back as a band was crazy.

It was just in time for the Brit Awards and we weren’t performing or anything, but Caroline and Lou were buzzing around the five of us constantly, trying to get us dressed and our hair and makeup done. We barely had time to think let alone talk to each other, so the first chance I got to talk to Zayn was while we were sitting in the van on the way to the show.

But Zayn was talking to Harry and Niall, and it seemed like he was still ignoring me.

By some miracle, we were seated next to each other although Zayn was squirming about as if he just wanted to sit three seats away on the other side of Louis. Before he could move, I grabbed his wrist, and for the first time in what felt like forever, he looked at me.

His eyes were the same shade of hazel with the same freckle on the left eye and he was still the same Zayn except something was different and the way he was looking at me was entirely foreign. It was like he hated me but there was a softness to it, and maybe – just maybe – that was my fault for rejecting him that night, but he was my best friend and I wasn’t gay or anything.

“What?” His words were a harsh hiss that had Harry turning to look at us from over Zayn’s shoulder.

“I want to talk to you. Not here, but afterwards, can we do that?” I asked, tightening my grip on his wrist ever so slightly.

One sharp nod of his head was all that I received before he was jerking his wrist away from me and moving three seats away.

*

After the show was over and we’d won three awards, we were all buzzed and giggly as we did interviews backstage. Zayn was standing beside me once again, his fingers brushing my side every now and then as he leaned in to whisper a slurred sentence into my ear.

When the van was taking us home, he was practically sitting in my lap and over his shoulder I caught Louis’s warning eyes. My house was the first stop on our ride and when I crawled out the door, Zayn was quick to follow, nearly falling over himself in his rush to shadow behind me.

Inside my house, Zayn headed straight for the sofa, stripping out of his suit as he went. By the time that he settled down onto the sofa, he was only in a thin white tshirt and his boxers, looking perfectly at home. His suit was a wrinkled pile on the floor that would garner some angry looks from Caroline for a few days. “So what’d you want to talk to me about, Leeyum?”

I moved into the kitchen to brew some coffee and heat up some leftover food from a few nights ago. “You know what I want to talk about, Zayn. It’s the reason I’ve been calling you for the last two months and the reason why I showed up at your house half a dozen times with no answer. It’s probably the same reason why you left town and ignored all of those calls.”

Glancing out through the doorway, I caught him blushing and ducking his head down to look at his legs. “Oh. That. Dunno if I’m drunk enough to talk about that, Li.”

I finished reheating the food and deposited it out for Zayn while I disappeared to my bedroom to change out of the suit. He was halfway into it when I came back out in a pair of sweatpants and a tshirt. I fetched my cup of coffee and Zayn came into the kitchen a moment later to make an alcoholic beverage from my wide selection of alcohols.

“Don’t.” I reached for his wrist as he reached for a bottle. “I think you’ve had enough and you should be sober when we talk, Zayn. Or as sober as you’ll be tonight.”

He frowned at me and filled a glass with water instead, bumping his shoulder into mine as he passed by. “We don’t have to talk about it. I think it’d be best if we just left it as one of those things in the past that just –“

“No, we’re talking about it, Zayn.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him around to face me. “Just tell me why you did it. Tell me why you kissed me.”

His eyes darted around the room, trying to look anywhere but at me. “I – I didn’t mean to. Well, I did, but like – you’ve got to understand, Liam…” He paused, squeezing onto my hand while taking a long, deep breath. “You’re my best mate. You’re more than that. Back when we talked about fate and soul mates and shit like that, I was serious – dead serious and, like, at the beginning of time I believe that we were beside each other; I believe that where I belong is right next to you.”

My body flushed with heat and surged with something that I couldn’t quite identify. “Soulmates? You’re telling me that you think that you and I are soulmates? Are you in love with me?” Like magnets, I was drawn closer to him, my body radiating with an energy that matched his.

His eyes were wider than I’d ever seen him and this time I recognized that look of panic in them and the nervous gulp. “I don’t know. I love you, yeah, but like I love the other boys too, but I think I love you more and this is the most fucked up conversation that I’ve ever had.” The beautiful boy in front of me dropped his head onto my shoulder, breathing heavily with his hand still clamped on mine.  “So, yeah, I love you, Leeyum, and I kissed you that day and I’ve wanted to kiss you every day for years now, but I know that you’re straight and I don’t know what came over me that night, but that day was something special, right?”

Those last few sentences were murmured into my shoulder, spilt secrets like red wine on white carpet. His words stained my thoughts until they were colored Zayn – _zaynzaynzaynzayn –_ and my heart was pounding out the beat to match that color.

“Hey,” I untangled our hands and reached up to slide my fingers over the back of his head. “Zaynie, look at me.”

Slowly he withdrew his face to look at me.  “I don’t know if I like boys. Well, I’m pretty sure that I don’t, but I know I like you a lot and I get a funny feeling inside when I see you and when you smile and when you laugh, and that day that we spent together, when we were in the field, I thought I was dying for a second because when I was looking down at you, I was feeling so many things all at once.”

I brought my other hand up to sweep over Zayn’s cheek before cupping the back of his neck and bringing his mouth crashing against mine for the second time.

_This_ kiss was something marvelous. His stubble scratched over my jaw, his tongue parted my lips, and I was swept away into the sweet oblivion that the kiss presented me with.

My insides felt like fire and ice, battling, heating, melting all at once. Stars and moons and galaxies sparkled on the backs of my closed eyelids. I felt like currents of electricity coursed up my sides when Zayn’s hands moved over my hips, pulling me against him even more.  

It was by far the most intense kiss of my life and I wasn’t sure if I liked boys, but I definitely loved Zayn and in this moment I could see the whole soulmates thing. It would explain the undeniable attraction I’ve felt towards him since the beginning, the buzzing in my head when we were too close, the need to always be closer. In this moment, buried in this kiss, the buzzing was stopped and we were wrapped in blissful silence.

“Is this what you want? Are you okay with this? Or am I just something for you to get off with tonight?”  He panted against my mouth when we pulled away for air.

I didn’t speak as the emotions, the need for him, coursed through me. I pushed at his shoulders, moving him back through the kitchen, away from the sofa and the coffee table where the now-cold leftovers sat. “Bed. Get to the bed.”

Zayn laughed and reached for my hands, pulling me back just slightly. “Slow down, Leeyum. I want to, I really do, but both of us are a bit drunk, and this is all new. Maybe we can just wait, yeah? I’d be perfectly fine with just watching a film with you tonight. We don’t have to do stuff.”

Maybe I was going just a bit crazy with the first contact I’ve really had with anyone in such a long time. “Yeah, what film?”

*

Settling in together was easy enough. We’d always been close and now it was no different except there was a bit more kissing than before. It wasn’t until the promo tour began a few days later that any problem arose. See, although the other boys may have guessed at some feelings or whatever, they never said anything and seeing as neither of us really knew what we were doing with each other, we kept this a secret from them.

Being in some semblance of a relationship with your bandmate is never a good idea because breakups do happen and at the very beginning of all of this, management had warned us against slipping into relationships within the band (to which we’d all argued that we weren’t gay, but several occurrences over the years had shifted that perspective slightly).

Here Zayn and I were, breaking that rule one kiss at a time.

We tried to keep it as secret as possible and when we were always together, it was no different from normal to everyone else. But we could barely keep our hands off of each other. Zayn’s hand was usually resting against the base of my spine or brushing against my shoulder to keep me close, and more often than not I realized that my fingers were tangled in the hem of his tshirt.

And if we spent the night in each other’s rooms more often, no one noticed or said anything about it. We sure as hell never brought it up; the only acknowledgement that we ever made was a simple head nod and fingers brushed over the back of a hand in confirmation.

Harry was the first to figure it out. We were in a small venue in Berlin where we were set up to do a press conference and some meet and greets. Zayn and I were sitting behind the scenes, so entangled with each other on the couch that we could barely even tell where he stopped and I began.

He was laughing at something I’d said and I was watching the way his face scrunched up with joy. When our youngest bandmate walked into the room he barely spared us a glance, but I heard him ask something, not that I was really listening because the musical mirth from Zayn’s mouth was much more enticing.

“Yeah, Harry.” Was the only response that I spared him as I waved my hand in his direction.

A second later there was the _ding_ of an iPhone being unplugged and another being plugged in, both of those sounds were followed by a sharp gasp. “What the hell is this?”

Something knocked into my knee – or maybe it was Zayn’s, either way we both flinched – and I looked down to see my phone sitting there between our tangled limbs. The screen was lit up, revealing the time, date, the option to ‘slide to unlock,’ and the background photo of Zayn in the field from that day.

It wasn’t anything for Harry to really be freaking out over; it was just a photo of my best mate looking drop dead gorgeous set as my background. But the boy was speechless, his mouth guppying as if he was a fish – the bulging of his surprised eyes only seemed to enhance that image.

After his mouth caught up to his brain, he spluttered out the follow-up question that Zayn and I had been waiting for: “Why do you have a photo of Zayn as your background?”

Maybe if it had been a normal photo – like one of both of us or even one where he wasn’t grinning up at the camera with heaps of fondness obvious in his eyes – maybe then Harry wouldn’t be so curious about it. But the truth was sitting right there in front of him as he looked at the way we were barely distinguishable from each other, arms and legs and clothes blending together, our bodies leaning as close together as possible, and there was possibly a hint of a lovebite peeking out from under Zayn’s shirt collar.

“Are you _together_?” His question jolted something inside of me and I was suddenly springing out of my Zayn nest. “Because if you are that’s totally alright, but how long has it been? Why haven’t you told us? Does everyone else already know?”

Harry was spitting out so many questions that I barely had the time to answer any of them before Niall came bursting into the room, dragging Sandy in behind him. Thankfully, Harry immediately shut up, but he threw a look at where I stood and Zayn was still sitting that let us both know that he wasn’t done yet.

The problem with most of his questions was that I didn’t know how to answer most of them. Zayn and I weren’t officially _together_ but we were together most of the time now; we’d barely spent a day apart since the night of the award show. But there wasn’t exactly a date on how long we’ve been “together” and all of our reasons for not telling them about us seemed ridiculous when I thought of saying them out loud.

Zayn and I resolved to not tell Harry anything. We could just pretend that he was making a big deal out of nothing and he would just have to accept that.

Of course, that plan only worked in our minds.

When he cornered us later that night at the hotel, we were sneaking into Zayn’s room, my fingers were tugging at the hem of his shirt and he was whispering into my ear as I laughed. I swear to God, Harry appeared out of nowhere. One second we were alone in the long stretch of hotel hallway, and then he was standing there right in front of us.

We pulled him into the room too.

After we came clean, he promised not to tell the others. “It’s just our secret. I’m great at keeping secrets!”

Later that night he tweeted something about “Love’s in the air.”

Most people brushed it off as Harry being Harry, but we knew that he was going to be flaunting this secret in the most obscure ways.

*

The first bump in our fast-paced road came after the promo tour ended. My family was getting antsy because it had been a few months since I’d gone home and they were worried about me. See, they weren’t worried because I’d not been home, but rather because I’d not been seen with a girlfriend in almost eight months; they know that I’m practically a serial dater.

I promised Mum I’d come home soon; I even had someone I wanted them to meet.

Zayn was no one that they’d not met a hundred times before. The whole family liked to joke with me that he was their favorite. But they’d never met him in this light before because this light hadn’t existed until a month and a half before.

When I told him about the promise I’d made to my parents, we were at his place. I was still in bed, wrapped in the warm sheets and watching him as he moved around the room, gathering up cans of spray paint and checking to see if they were empty or not. As soon as the words “I want to take you to meet my parents” left my mouth, there was a loud clattering sound because he’d dropped every can he was holding.

“You what?”

“Mum wants me to come home for a bit, and I want them to meet you. As my boyfriend. Or whatever this is that we’re doing.” I explained carefully.

The frown that quickly carved itself into his brow notified me that he wasn’t down with that. “Leeyum, no. I’m not ready for that. I can’t – I can’t do that. Your mum will tell my mum and my parents don’t know they don’t know – they don’t know _anything_ about this thing between you and I. I can’t.” His hands started shaking and his efforts pick the cans back up was a failure that had me moving out of the bed and over to his side.

He was huffing and puffing like the effort to breathe was getting difficult and his hands were trembling and when I caught his gaze, his eyes were blown wide with panic.

I’d thought that he was as into this relationship as I was; he was the one that made the first move, the one that sprang this realization on me that maybe I’m not 100% straight, but now he was kneeling on the ground in front of me, trembling and panicking.

“Hey, Z, babe,” I slid my palms against the stubble on his cheeks, thumbing at the underside of his jaw as I tilted his chin up so that he was looking at me. His hazel eyes had never been so wide and panicked. Not the time before we performed on the X Factor for the first time, not before our first shows, or the times that we were caught in a mob of fans. He’d _never_ looked quite this panicked. “We don’t have to; it’s okay.”

He shook his head and pushed away from me, scooting back across his messy bedroom floor until his back hit the wall and his knees came up to his chest. I watched him fold in on himself, watched him comb his fingers through his hair until it was standing up crazily in every direction.

I knew that look because it’s the look that Zayn’s always gotten every time that he needed a bit of a break from all of us and the hectic-ness of our lives.

“I’m going to go.” No reaction, he just sat there with his back flat against the wall, staring across the room, through me, as if I wasn’t even there. “I, uh, text me later, yeah?”

He continue to just stare right through me and for the first time since I’d met him, I felt as if I didn’t matter. I pushed to my feet and wobbled over to him on my now shaky legs. A shudder made me draw back as soon as my lips brushed his forehead.

Okay, something had definitely happened and changed between us.

I left his room with my clothes piled in my arms, pressed to my chest and my aching, bleeding heart.

*

He didn’t text me that night and I was giving him the space I know that he needs. So we didn’t talk. And a few more days went by and we still didn’t talk and it was like a flashback to a couple months before because I went over to his place, rang the bell, knocked on the door, but he never answered.

I went home without him and had to tell Mum that the person I’d wanted her to meet wasn’t ready for it yet. Nevermind the fact that she still didn’t even know that it was a boy that I was planning on bringing home for them to meet. They had no clue and that made my chest ache even more than it’s been hurting since I walked out his door.

*

The album release party was odd. Harry danced around Zayn and I like a cherub, throwing the dumb confetti off the tables at us, singing the lyrics to the fucking love song that he’d written as a side project for someone in Hollywood who he wasn’t allowed to tell us about yet. It didn’t take long for the other two to catch on.

But it hurt and there was a dull burning pressure in my chest because Zayn was ignoring me. Harry could push us together and cover us in glitter all he wanted, but Zayn would only offer a tight smile before inching away to go wrap himself in a conversation with Caroline or Niall or any other number of people who were there.

Louis picked up on what Harry was doing first of course; sharp as a knife, that boy is. He pulled me aside after an hour, drawing me in close with a devilish grin on his lips. “So what’s going on with you and our precious Zayn? Hmm, Payner?” That was punctuated with a soft blow to my arm and I squirmed away.

“Nothing’s happening, Louis. Harry’s just being an idiot and Zayn’s not talking to me, so absolutely nothing is happening.” Perhaps there was a slightly angry tone behind my words and he definitely caught onto that.

“ _Was_ there something happening?”

I let my eyes dance around the room – catching sight of Harry hanging off of Lou as she tried to get him to let go of her and Niall stood beside them, laughing and taking a picture – before I looked back at Louis’s inquisitive gaze. “Yeah, maybe.”

Maybe my voice broke, maybe I watched his eyes melt and he drew me in even closer than before as he directed me over to sit down in one of the booths in the back of the room. Maybe I began to let my bleeding heart pour out everything I’d been holding in over the past few weeks. Maybe Louis listened with intent ears and a soothing hand rubbing my back.

He left me after a while because Eleanor arrived and she was more important than me, so I told him to go.

Niall swept into the abandoned seat not even a full sixty seconds later. He was alive with laughter and bubbly with energy that this party was giving him. “So I’ve heard that you’re in a spot of trouble. Is that right?”

So they all knew and yet that didn’t matter because for all that I could tell, it was over now, there was nothing for them to know.

Zayn disappeared a little while after that and I didn’t expect to see him again until tour rehearsals started in a month and a half.

*

I was coming home from a night out at Funky Buddha. Andy had left me to find my own way home and I was so, so drunk. The world was blurring around me and I’d called him five times in the cab to tell him that he was a terrible friend (the next morning I found out that only one of them had been a phone call, the rest were actually voice memos to myself). I stumbled into my apartment at fifteen minutes to four, the whole place was dark and cold and I was lonely suddenly, wishing that I’d brought someone home with me tonight even if it had just been Andy or Jordan or any of my friends.

Somehow, I managed to make it through my cluttered front hall into the kitchen without crashing into too many things or falling over. I poured myself a glass of water and after spilling most of that down my front, I moved out into the main room.

The window that looked out over the city was glowing with busy, lively lights. I crashed into the sofa.

The tiles on the floor were cold even through my socks, so I settled onto the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest, and sitting there in the dark silence, staring out at the city.

I don’t know how long I sat there for but I didn’t move and I didn’t fall asleep, I just sat and stared.

“Liam?”

The voice was soft, yet too loud and I jumped in my seat with an embarrassing squeal as I turned to face the source of sound that had come from the bottom of the stairs that led up to my bedroom.

Zayn was standing there, hair ruffled up on one side, his chest bare, and his bottom half only covered by a pair of boxers.

“What are you doing here?” I managed to ask after I got over the shock that I wasn’t alone in my home. “How’d you get in?” How long had he been there?

He didn’t say another word as he walked over to where I was sitting, and he stood there in front of me looking sad and scared and open.

While it was beyond surprising to see him standing there in front of me, I wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t a dream or an alcohol-induced hallucination. I reached out and when my hand connected with the warm skin of his hip, Zayn crumpled down against me, burying himself against my side, nuzzling his nose into my neck and wrapping his arms so tightly around me that I thought we were going to meld together or die trying.

He was so warm and present and soft and quiet and he smelled like me.

“I’ve missed you, Leeyum.” He mumbled into my neck.

“Missed you too, Zaynie.”

*

He took me home to his parents before we went to mine.

“I need to do this.” He told me one morning. “I need to tell them who I really am.”

So I went with him, holding his hand the whole way even when he shook and could barely draw breath as a panic attack struck. I told him more than once that we didn’t have to do this if he wasn’t ready.

“No, I need to do this. I want to do this. I want them to know because it’ll be everyone I care about that knows then.” But still he shook until the air around him was vibrating with energy.

When we pulled up in front of his parents’ house, Safaa was the first to come outside, shooting through the door like a bullet and straight into Zayn, nearly bowling him over. That was when she saw me and her already bright eyes grew impossibly brighter as she moved over to hug me as well, a pink tint flooding into her cheeks.

Everyone else was waiting inside, excited that Zayn was back and – hey! Look at that! He’s brought Liam along too! – they welcomed both of us in with open arms and warm bowls of soup to fight the late winter chill that permeated the February air.

The whole of the Malik family was there: aunts, uncles, cousins. And while Zayn was more at ease now that he was in the safety of his family, surrounded by all of the familiar faces and names and smells of home, there was still a certain nervous energy that I could feel.

As the day dragged on and his family began to trickle out the door to return to their own homes, the tightness in his spine became evident again and I frequently found myself tracing my fingers over his shoulders, down his back, and drawing a spiral at the base of his spine. The time was coming and even I was getting nervous.

I sat beside him on the sofa as the last of his non-immediate family left. His fingers were twitching where they rested on his leg that was bouncing up and down, up and down until I pressed my hand over his, stilling both the bouncing and the twitching. Hazel eyes met mine and he sighed, dropping his head back onto the cushioned sofa-back.

His sisters and his parents gathered around in the room to talk to both of us and catch up. That’s when I was expecting him to do it. Every time that he paused in speaking or he glanced over at me, my heart skipped a beat and I held my breath, expecting him to tell them all about it then and there. But the hours passed by and I began to relax because it wasn’t happening, he wasn’t saying anything about us, the reason he’d brought me home with him.

After all topics of conversation had expired (except the one that had yet to arise) Doniya suggested we watch movies and that’s when the two youngest decided to go to bed. Doniya squeezed herself between Zayn and me while Mr and Mrs Malik sat in the loveseat beside us.

I dozed through the first movie until Zayn’s oldest sister bid us all goodnight and left the room. That’s when he moved closer to me, closing the gap that had been between us all night.

When the film ended, his parents stood up as if to leave and that’s when I felt him stiffen beside me, his heartbeat somehow passed through him and into me because then my heart was pounding nervously and I knew what was about to happen.

“Can you stay a minute?” He asked quietly, his voice shaking only slightly as he stared directly at his parents. “I want to talk to you both about something.”

Trisha’s eyes flickered towards me momentarily and I could see the concerned fear – she probably thought it was much worse than what it was going to be.

It wasn’t until Yaser’s eyes flickered over towards me and then down that I realized that Zayn was tightly gripping my hand that was resting on my thigh. He was holding my hand which wasn’t altogether that odd and different from how we’d been the past few years, but in this situation it certainly was different.

“Baba, Mum, I – I, uh, I –“ His voice was sticking in his throat so he paused to cough, casting a fleeting glance in my direction. I squeezed his hand. “I’m dating Liam.”

My breath was caught in my throat as we each held a deathgrip on each other’s hands, waiting for his parents to have a reaction.

All four of us were sitting in silence; they were shocked, and we were waiting, but silence it was.

The first to speak was Trisha. “Well, that’s – that’s something, sunshine. And when you say dating…?” She reached for her husband’s hand and he was still silent, still staring at his only son.

“I mean, Liam and I are dating, we’re together. We, uh, kiss and stuff, I don’t know, Mum. What are you expecting me to say?” Zayn turned to look at me with a look of relief and laughter and happiness and a tiny bit of skepticism.

“You’re gay, then?” Yaser finally spoke.

Zayn swallowed hard. “Well, yes and no. I like Liam, but just Liam. Every other male is just a guy. Liam is –“ Slowly he turned back to face me. “You’re the one for me.”

My mind went buzzingly, blindingly white and silent. The only thing I could see was Zayn’s face, I could only hear his words repeating in an endless loop, and my heartbeat and the heat filling my body was all that I could feel.

Some noise left my lips, it was something between a whimper and a groan and it peeled itself straight out of my heart. I pulled him closer and nuzzled into his neck. “You’re the one for me too, Z.”

His parents sat there and watched as I peeked back out from his neck. His mother was smiling at us with happy, possibly teary eyes. His father was watching us with a curious look that I couldn’t describe as being either happy or mad or any emotion, but it wasn’t emotionless exactly. I guess he was _complacent._

*

The next day we told his sisters. Waliyha just smiled into her plate; it was a smug smile as if she’d known all along that something like this was going to happen. Doniya was surprised, but happy, and Safaa was in shock for a little while, but I think that’s mostly because she had a crush on me.

Zayn seemed loads happier now that that secret was off of his chest and we spent the next few days curled up together all around the house while his family was just happy to have him home for a while.

Then we went to visit my family. I called the day before we were leaving Zayn’s place and told Dad that we’d be coming by the next day.

“Who’s we?” My father asked as soon as the words had left my mouth.

My heart skipped into my throat and I turned around in bed so that I could see Zayn who was still sleeping in the late morning light. “That would be me and someone that I want you to meet. I’ll see you and Mum tomorrow. Love you, bye.” And I ended the call before I could choke on my nerves.

There was no real doubt in my mind that my parents would be anything other than accepting. Still the nerves persevered until the moment that we arrived in front of my parents’ home and Mum was waiting at the door with open arms for me to fall into. She smelled like home and her hugs felt like childhood. Dad was right behind her and we shared a quick hug before I was turning around to see Zayn slowly making his way to the front door.

“Zayn! It’s wonderful to see you!” Mum pulled him in for a hug as well and I could see his embarrassment and nerves as he kissed her cheek before standing tall again to face my father. After their perfunctory hug, we were ushered into the kitchen where Mum forcefed us pie until we were bursting and I was leaning into Zayn like he was a crutch (despite the fact that we were sitting).

Eventually, Mum cleared her throat and spoke up about the topic that I knew was going to arise sooner or later. “Li, I thought you said you were bringing someone special. And Zayn is special, but your Dad made it sound like you meant someone, you know, _special._ ”

Under the kitchen table, Zayn’s hand found mine just as my pulse sped up. “Zayn is someone special, Mum. I have something to tell you.” He squeezed my hand again and I watched both of my parents turn to look up from their plates so fast that they should’ve had whiplash. I’d gone over these words a thousand times since I’d made this realization a few months back. “Zayn and I are together, like, in a relationship, or whatever. It was sort of sudden; I didn’t see it coming until it was happening, but it happened, and I’m here and I’m happy, so I hope you two are too.”

My palm was sweaty in Zayn’s hand as I gazed at my parents across the table. Mum was getting teary-eyed – I couldn’t tell if they were happy tears, sad tears, or just tears – and Dad had looked down at his lap. Glancing sideways at Zayn, I saw that his eyes were on me, carefully examining the side of my face; his hand tightened around mine.

“Dad? Mum?” I prodded Mum’s foot with mine under the table.

She was still blinking back tears as her lips twitched up into a smile. “I’m happy, Liam. This is the happiest I’ve been for you since you made it into the band and you called home to tell us and when Simon signed you boys, and then you had your first number one.” Mum sniffled and wiped away her tears. “I just wish that you’d have told us before that you had these feelings.”

I pushed my chair away from the table and rounded it so that I could hug her, wrap my mother in my arms the way that she had done for me so many times. “I didn’t know I had feelings until we were already together. I love you, Mum.”

Dad was still silent, still watching his hands fidgeting in his lap, but now he was shaking his head as well.

“I can’t believe this.” He finally mumbled as he stopped shaking his head to look up at my empty seat. “I can’t believe this.”

“Dad?” I pulled back from Mum to frown at him.

He was frowning as well, simply staring at the wall behind where I’d been sat. “My son, my boy.” I moved around Mum so that I was standing beside Dad. “I’m proud of you, m’boy.” And then I was dragged into a tight hug by him, crushing me into his chest. And I was happy, so, so happy that everyone that I loved and cared about knew and accepted it.

I looked over at Zayn to see that he was glowing too.

*

He laid beside me on his belly in his bed, covered in sheets and ink with sun dappled skin. Zayn’s dark hair was growing out; the color of midnight sticking out all over the place and falling into his peaceful face. It was nearly noon and there was a bird singing outside the window, our skin was bare and there was a pretty bruise on the underside of my boyfriend’s jaw.

All was well.


End file.
